Human Vices and Human Worth in Dante's Comedy
Human Vices and Human Worth in Dante's Comedy

Author: Patrick Boyde

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-06

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780521026659

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Patrick Boyde brings Dante's thought and poetry into focus for the modern reader by restoring the Comedy to its intellectual and literary context in 1300. He begins by describing the authorities that Dante acknowledged in the field of ethics and the modes of thought he shared with the great thinkers of his time. After giving a clear account of the differing approaches and ideals embodied in Aristotelian philosophy, Christianity and courtly literature, Boyde concentrates on the poetic representation of the most important vices and virtues in the Comedy. He stresses the heterogeneity and originality of Dante's treatment, and the challenges posed by his desire to harmonize these divergent value-systems. The book ends with a detailed case study of the 'vices and worth' of Ulysses in which Boyde throws light on recent controversies by deliberately remaining within the framework of the thirteenth-century assumptions, methods and concepts explored in previous chapters.

Dante: The Divine Comedy
Dante: The Divine Comedy

Author: Robin Kirkpatrick

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-01-19

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 9780521539944

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In this accessible critical introduction to Dante's Divine Comedy Robin Kirkpatrick principally focuses on Dante as a poet and storyteller. He addresses important questions such as Dante's attitude towards Virgil, and demonstrates how an early work such as the Vita nuova is a principal source of the literary achievement of the Comedy. His detailed reading reveals how the great narrative poem explores the relationship that Dante believed to exist between God as creator of the universe and the human being as a creature of God.

Inferno: The Divine Comedy I
Inferno: The Divine Comedy I

Author: Dante

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2006-03-30

Total Pages: 722

ISBN-13: 0141916443

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Describing Dante's descent into Hell midway through his life with Virgil as a guide, Inferno depicts a cruel underworld in which desperate figures are condemned to eternal damnation for committing one or more of seven deadly sins. As he descends through nine concentric circles of increasingly agonising torture, Dante encounters doomed souls including the pagan Aeneas, the liar Odysseus, the suicide Cleopatra, and his own political enemies, damned for their deceit. Led by leering demons, the poet must ultimately journey with Virgil to the deepest level of all. For it is only by encountering Satan, in the heart of Hell, that he can truly understand the tragedy of sin.

Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity
Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity

Author: Prue Shaw

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2014-02-10

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 0871407809

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The best and most eloquent introduction to Dante for our time. Prue Shaw is one of the world's foremost authorities on Dante. Written with the general reader in mind, Reading Dante brings her knowledge to bear in an accessible yet expert introduction to his great poem. This is far more than an exegesis of Dante’s three-part Commedia. Shaw communicates the imaginative power, the linguistic skill and the emotional intensity of Dante’s poetry—the qualities that make the Commedia perhaps the greatest literary work of all time and not simply a medieval treatise on morality and religion. The book provides a graphic account of the complicated geography of Dante's version of the afterlife and a sure guide to thirteenth-century Florence and the people and places that influenced him. At the same time it offers a literary experience that lifts the reader into the universal realms of poetry and mythology, creating links not only to the classical world of Virgil and Ovid but also to modern art and poetry, the world of T. S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney and many others. Dante's questions are our questions: What is it to be a human being? How should we judge human behavior? What matters in life and in death? Reading Dante helps the reader to understand Dante’s answers to these timeless questions and to see how surprisingly close they sometimes are to modern answers. Reading Dante is an astonishingly lyrical work that will appeal to both those who’ve never read the Commedia and those who have. It underscores Dante's belief that poetry can change human lives.

The Rose and Geryon
The Rose and Geryon

Author: Gabriella I. Baika

Publisher: CUA Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0813226090

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The Rose and Geryon examines patterns of verbal behavior in works by Jean de Meun and Dante (with a focus on the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy) in relationship with the most influential systems of verbal sins in the Middle Ages, systems elaborated by William Peraldus, Thomas Aquinas, Domenico Cavalca, and Laurent of Orléans. The book begins with a presentation of these four systems, and from there proceeds to analyze Jean de Meun's Testament as a possible source of influence for the Divine Comedy and take a closer look at Dante's prose works in search for a comprehensive theory of sinful speech. Furthermore Baika discusses verbal transgressions such as flattery, evil counsel, double talk, sowing of discord, and falsifying of words, under the heading Lingua dolosa "The Guileful Tongue," and the relationship between violence and the poetic discourse. The myriad ways in which the two iconic poets of medieval France and Italy absorb the tradition of peccata linguae in their works prove that abusive speech was not the exclusive sphere of interest of the ecclesiastical writers; secular poetry in the vernacular enriched in original ways the medieval debate on verbal vices. The Rose and Geryon addresses scholars and students of French and Italian literatures, as well as readers interested in ethics and women's studies.

Dante: A Very Short Introduction
Dante: A Very Short Introduction

Author: Peter Hainsworth

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2015-02-26

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 0191507679

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In this Very Short Introduction, Peter Hainsworth and David Robey take a different approach to Dante, by examining the main themes and issues that run through all of his work, ranging from autobiography, to understanding God and the order of the universe. In doing so, they highlight what has made Dante a vital point of reference for modern writers and readers, both inside and outside Italy. They emphasize the distinctive and dynamic interplay in Dante's writing between argument, ideas, and analysis on the one hand, and poetic imagination on the other. Dante was highly concerned with the political and intellectual issues of his time, demonstrated most powerfully in his notorious work, The Divine Comedy. Tracing the tension between the medieval and modern aspects, Hainsworth and Robey provide a clear insight into the meaning of this masterpiece of world literature. They highlight key figures and episodes in the poem, bringing out the originality and power of Dante's writing to help readers understand the problems that Dante wanted his audience to confront but often left up to the reader to resolve. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Dante and Aquinas
Dante and Aquinas

Author: Christopher Ryan

Publisher: Ubiquity Press

Published: 2013-05-15

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 1909188115

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Christopher Ryan's study of Dante and Aquinas, touching on issues of nature and grace, of explicit and implicit faith, and of desire and destiny, is intended to mark the difference between them in key areas of theological sensibility. Re-shaped and revised by John Took on the basis of papers made available to him from Christopher Ryan's estate, it seeks to deepen our understanding of one of the great cultural encounters in European letters.

The Seven Deadly Sins
The Seven Deadly Sins

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2007-03-31

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9047429451

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This volume presents a selection of essays undertaken by participants in an NEH Summer Seminar in 2004 on the topic of the seven deadly sins, viewed individually and as a whole, as part of the Begriffsgeschichte of the Middle Ages and beyond in which concepts are constructed within the cultural milieus in which they function. The essays in the first part study the political and social ethics of medieval communities. In the second part, the institutional imperatives within the Church of formulating and teaching about the capital vices are the focus of research. In the final section, the contributions deal with ways in which secular artists and authors (in particular, Dante) contribute to the cultural construction of the vices. Contributors include: Dwight D. Allman, Bridget K. Balint, V. S. Benfell III, Dallas G. Denery II, Laura D. Gelfand, Susan E. Hill, Holly Johnson, Hilaire Kallendorf, John Kitchen, Rhonda L. McDaniel, Richard Newhauser, Thomas Parisi, and Derrick G. Pitard.

Dante
Dante

Author: Nick Havely

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2008-04-15

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 047077987X

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A comprehensive guide to Dante’s life and literature, with an emphasis on his Commedia. This text looks at the influences that shaped Dante’s writing, and the reception of his work by later readers, from the 14th century to the present. Introduces Dante through four main approaches: the context of his life and career; his literary and cultural traditions; key themes, episodes and passages in his own work, especially the Commedia; and the reception and appropriation of his work by later readers, from the fourteenth century to the present Written by an expert Dante scholar Provides new translations of substantial passages from Dante’s poems and from the world of his contemporaries Includes explanatory diagrams of Dante’s 'other-worlds', and a section of illustrations by medieval and modern artists Builds a vivid and complex picture of Dante's imagination, intellect and literary presence Helpful bibliographies include relevant web resources

Dante's Christian Ethics
Dante's Christian Ethics

Author: George Corbett

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-03-12

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1108489419

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This book is a major re-appraisal of the Commedia as originally envisaged by Dante: as a work of ethics. Privileging the ethical, Corbett increases our appreciation of Dante's eschatological innovations and literary genius. Drawing upon a wider range of moral contexts than in previous studies, this book presents an overarching account of the complex ordering and political programme of Dante's afterlife. Balancing close readings with a lucid overview of Dante's Commedia as an ethical and political manifesto, Corbett cogently approaches the poem through its moral structure. The book provides detailed interpretations of three particularly significant sins - pride, sloth, and avarice - and the three terraces of Purgatory devoted to them. While scholars register Dante's explicit confession of pride, the volume uncovers Dante's implicit confession of sloth and prodigality (the opposing subvice of avarice) through Statius, his moral cypher.